New York Post, Tuesday, August 31, 1999

'Safe, Legal, Rare': One Out of Three OK?
by Maggie Gallagher

Are doctors allowed to get away with murder? According to James B. Stewart's new book, Dr. Michael Swango probably killed five patients in Illinois; five patients in Ohio, where a fellow resident dubbed him "Double O Swango" (as in "License to Kill"); five at the Veteran's Affairs Hospital in Northport, NY; and perhaps 20 more in Zimbabwe, where he fled to escape suspicion. Swango is in jail now in Portland, Ore. -- like Al Capone, not for murder but for a more beaurocratic crime: insurance fraud. He's due out next July.

Chances are, if not for Stewart's book, Dr. Double O Swango would soon find a way to practice again -- both his specialty and his hobby. After all, the fact that he was once CONVICTED of poisoning five co-workers didn't stop him from getting a medical license or a doctor's paycheck.

So perhaps we shouldn't be shocked that another doctor in New York is apparently about to get away with the lesser crimes of fraud, abuse and neglect of his patients, plus the deliberate taking of the life of unborn babies well past New York's legal abortion limit of 24 weeks.

Dr. Mark Binder, on the lam for three years until picked up by Interpol in April, has negotiated a deal with state office in which he will get just five years' probation for guilty pleas in two felonies, according to Westchester County's Journal News. What did Dr. Mark Binder do? According to Department of Health records, Binder bilked poor women on Medicaid by refusing to perform abortions unless he was illegally paid extra. He deliberately ordered ultrasound technicians to lower the fetus' gestational age when it appeared the baby was too far along for legal abortion, telling the technician that "the report looked better" that way.

In other words, he lied to pregnant women and to medical authorities so he could do dangerous, illegal, late-term abortions, often without emergency hospital backup available.

This is apparently standard practice in the dark underworld of the late-term abortion business.

In Arizona, Dr. John Biskind finally faces manslaughter charges in the death of Lou Ann Herron, who was neglected and bled to death at his clinic in 1998. But according to the Arizona Republic, Lou Ann Herron could have been saved if authorities had stopped Dr. Biskind earlier.

In 1990, according to official records, Biskind tried to abort a 27-week fetus he misdiagnosed as 10 weeks old. In 1998, Dr. Biskind tried to abort a 17-year old girl's pregnancy, which he estimated at 13 weeks, only to discover the baby was actually full-term. The baby survived Dr. Biskind's abortion attempt but was born with a fractured skull.

Pro-choicers like to pretend that abortionists are competent, compassionate physicians. That's how they justify letting doctors perform abortions on minors without parents' knowledge, or permitting unrelated adults to transport girls across state lines to have abortions. But many abortion doctors are more interested in money than women's rights, or women's health, or even women's lives.

So why no jail sentence for a doctor who fled the country rather than stand trial, who cheated the government and poor women, unlawfully killed late-term babies, and took huge risks with pregnant women's lives? Local pro-life advocates suspect it has something to do with the New York attorney general's strong pro-choice politics. Certainly Binder has tried to turn himself into a pre-choice icon, claiming he fled out of fear of anti-abortion protesters.

The biggest mystery is why pro-choicers play along. Why aren't New York's abortion advocates -- like, say, would-be Sen. Hillary Clinton -- demanding this butcher's head?

"Safe, legal and rare" is the public stance. But I guess when push comes to shove both the "safe" and the "rare" parts are dispensable.

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Readers may reach Maggie Gallagher at GallagherIAV@Yahoo.com